July 01, 1985 - Columbus, OH

Show Day - Cloudy/Rain

Wake up 8:30AM. Lattell came over. Went to Campus Cafe for breakfast. 5 people - $11.50 - not bad. Called place n Columbus - Bob's Chevy - will fix van for 130 bucks - cool! After breakfast to radio station. Dave makes calls. Enigma still didn't send promo copies out - bummed.

We were beginning the tour and most college radio stations and press folks still didn't have the album.

Drive to Columbus - follow Lattell and friend. 4 hour drive. Find club - Stashe's - nice place, decent sound system - real tech head soundman. Sound check and go to radio station. Ohio State University cable radio. Talk - we can say anything on the air. Play some NBQ songs off the album - plug show.

The first few years of touring we ended up playing often at Stashe's. Met our pals the Royal Cresent Mob there. They were one of the best live bands I've ever seen. A bit hard to hit the stage after a set by those fellows. By 'NBQ' I mean 'Not Broadcast Quality'. We got to play songs on Big Lizard that had naughty curse words in them.

Back to club. Big middle of the industry bands play here. Big people too like Suzanne Vega - on June 27 - Butthole Surfers - Go Betweens - Leroi Brothers etc. Small crowd - maybe 35-40 people. First band - Make Shift - good songs - garagy sound - honest rock. Marci - girl bass player. We stayed at her friend Sue's house (another bass player). Small party until 3-4AM. Beer - we all crashed. Show went ok. Sound was ok. Set was good and crowd response was good. A drunk dude wanted to be in the band and was removed from the stage several times. $50 from the door - $4-5 from sticker sales. ($10 at Pittsburgh - $10 at Atlantic City gig). It was raining when we packed up our gear.

I find my 'Big middle of the industry bands' term quite funny here. I also like the fact that I've included Suzanne Vega and the Butthole Surfers in the same sentence! And what is it about girl bass players? They seemed to be all over the place in the 80's.

Posted by Dean at July 1, 1985 10:47 PM
Comments

Okay, I guess I will post this here since it is about my name sake and you mention the Leroi Brothers up above.
When the band first started, were you all big Leroi Borthers fans and that lead to the BTO cover or what?

Posted by: BigTimeOperator at December 2, 2003 05:18 PM

Yes - we were all fans of the band. Dave Blood had an album - I think it was "Check This Action". We listened to it all the time. The song "Ain’t I’m A Dog" was good too...

Posted by: Dean at December 2, 2003 06:08 PM

Boy Howdy! No real relevant place to put this, so thanks for posting the diary.
[insert geeky fanboy VFW reference here]

Posted by: Fezboy! at December 2, 2003 08:23 PM

The Sue and Marcy would in fact be SCRAWL..small small world..Marcy also appeared on Silo the huskie's recent cd "Sons of Columbus"

Posted by: Bair at December 3, 2003 11:08 AM

SCRAWL were good. I think we played at least one show with them in Youngstown, OH at one point.

Posted by: Dean at December 3, 2003 11:42 AM

i played in youngstown, oh a couple of weeks ago. where did you guys usually play there??

-rick

Posted by: rickjohnson at December 3, 2003 03:20 PM

I am pretty sure Stache's is called Little Brothers now, I believe this is the site.....

http://www.littlebrothers.com

I am from Youngstown, OH but I moved up to Cleveland 4 years ago....

I played with Joes band Town Managers in Youngstown in 1998, he told me Dead Milkmen played Cedars in Youngstown, all he remembers from that show is someone brought him or the band has tea, hehehhe...

Cedars is still around
http://www.cedarslounge.com

Posted by: Tommy at December 5, 2003 01:40 AM

I see that "Little Brothers" is calling itself 'formerly Stashe's' but in fact is in a different location! Kinda not the same really.

Yeah - it was Cedars - the name is familiar.

Posted by: Dean at December 5, 2003 06:38 AM

Owners of Stache's moved to a new location, opened up Little Brother's. Some old Stache memorabilia hanging up in the club.

And it remains the #1 place for bands to play in Columbus.

Posted by: Robert Duffy at December 9, 2003 10:05 AM